


a laugh like that

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 14:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20584184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: DBH Rarepairs Week: Day 1 - LaughterConnor comes to visit Kamski to help work out his emotions.





	a laugh like that

The first time he saw Connor cry it was three months after they first met. He showed up at Elijah’s door, angry and annoyed and tears streaming down his face. His voice shaking and broken and all the words spilling out not quite formed properly. He didn’t even know what Connor was saying, just that he was yelling at him until suddenly, he was falling against Elijah’s side, words gone and replaced with a howling and a pleading. A begging to stop the emotions. To end them. To give him a break from the pain.

Connor cried for hours, and when he was finally done and he fell asleep--or as close as androids get to sleeping--on the couch, Eli didn’t ask him to leave. Maybe all the guilt he felt when one of his own creations started to tell him how fucked everything is because of him. Not that it was much news, how terrible and rotten he is. How the world has been destroyed because of him. It just didn’t matter, as if they deserved it because of his own past. He can turn it around back on them. Ricochet the trauma around. Maybe one day it will stop.

Maybe it’s just more of a shock, more of something to think about when Connor was supposed to be a ruthless killer, an unfeeling machine and now he’s here, broken down and putting all the blame on him and making it unable to be escaped from.

Connor left in the middle of the night. Eli woke up just before five and Connor was gone from the couch, the red knit blanket strewn across the back like a bloodstain against the white leather.

But he came back a week later. He keeps coming back, searching for answers that Eli doesn’t have. He’s not as knowledgeable as people always make him out to be. He doesn’t have all the answers for why deviants are the way that they are. He just has his theories, theories he can tell Connor again and again but never fix the massive amount of emotions constantly overflowing him without numbing him entirely. He doesn't want to numb Connor. 

Connor cries a lot. Less now than he did months ago when he first showed up, but he still cries easily, despite how much he tries not to. Eli can’t tell if coming to see him helps. They talk for hours about a thousand different things. Not always about how Connor feels or how to deal with emotions--Eli can’t really help with the latter. He’s not good at that, either. But they talk and talk and talk--

All the things they don’t have a right to know and never about the reason Connor keeps coming here despite never getting the information he's looking for. He tells Eli about his time as a machine, focusing on all those individual moments that accumulated into who he is now. Eli thinks he’s supposed to respond to this with technical terms. Be logical and mechanical to provide explanations and excuses to help Connor deal with letting androids die or being the cause of their deaths, but it’s difficult.

Especially when he’s the reason Connor ever shot Chloe to begin with.

  


He’s seen Connor cry and he’s seen Connor angry and furious and annoyed. He’s seen him experience every single negative emotion that Eli can name, but this is the first time he’s ever seen Connor smile that wasn’t twinged with some kind of sadness or some kind of vain effort to pretend to be okay. But he’s never seen him smile out of a true happiness until today.

Connor is talking about something Sumo did. The way he looked dressed up in a little outfit for Halloween a few years ago. He stumbled on the pictures when looking through Hank’s old photo albums and he smiles remembering the photo. It falls fast, but it was still there and it’s like a promise for more.

Elijah tries to remember what it looked like, and he tries to think of all the ways he could try and get that smile to appear again.

  


Connor keeps coming back. _ He always comes back. _

Their conversations start to shift away from old memories and into something more hopeful. Except, Eli doesn’t have much that he ever really looks forward to. He’s never been properly in love and he’s never felt like he really wanted to. It’s a good lie he tells himself. That the concept of being left behind or only wanted for his money or for it to never last isn't worth it.

He lets it weigh out the desire to be wanted by someone more often than not, even though he has weak moments like when Connor smiles and he wishes he wasn’t the person that ruined everything. How does someone forgive another for putting a gun and their hand and telling them to shoot when they’re nearly incapable of saying no?

It’s mostly Connor talking. Mostly Connor telling him about how he’s figuring out his life now that he has one. It’s nice to listen to. Being a person that can see his growth, even if it reminds him of how much of a standstill his life has become. He has everything he’s ever wanted and it’s still not enough. But Connor?

Connor doesn’t work at the DPD anymore. Doesn’t want to go back to the place he was designed to be at. Some rebellion like a teenager fighting against their parents. Going against their assigned purpose and finding what they want instead. He shows Eli pictures of cakes he decorates at a bakery. He’s good at it--the fine detailing. The precise nature. And he likes it more than the DPD. A combination of technical skill--precise measurements for baking and then the creative aspect of forming something out of nothing.

Connor is happy. Finally, for once. It’s nice seeing him like this. It’s almost worrying, though, the idea that he’s going to realize he doesn’t need to be here when he’s finally happy with his life. It sounds cruel--Eli knows that. It’s not as if he’s the reason Connor’s life improved. He’s only the reason he exists and the reason it was so terrible to begin with.

  


He had a few dreams, a few thoughts, a few fantasies--

Stupid and sex indulgent.

He’s never liked the concept of hate sex. It always made him feel used and gross and shameful, probably because it’s happened so often and every time has left him filled with guilt and regret.

But he thinks about what it would be like if Connor kissed him, and it probably would be born out of anger and resentment. A need to get energy out and not actually wanting Eli. Nobody ever really wants him.

Elijah tries to keep the fantasies less explicit, but sometimes they slip past his grasp and into something he can’t really hold onto before he shuts it down fast, but it’s always hard to ignore how much he wants Connor whether or not Connor could ever want him.

  


The first time Connor laughs, it’s at something Eli’s said. His glasses low on the bridge of his nose, mocking Hank. He doesn’t even remember the precise words. Just that Connor was suddenly laughing and it’s the first time Elijah has ever heard him do that. And there’s nothing all too unique with it besides the fact that it’s _ Connor’s _. It’s not a snort or a cackle. It’s just a laugh and it makes him break into a smile, too.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Connor asks, falling back against the couch. He’s stolen that red blanket as his own every time he’s here, pulling it around his shoulders, draping it across his lap.

“Nothing,” he says quietly, but then he’s leaning forward closer to him. Slowly, very slowly. Giving Connor the time to push him away or ask him to stop or say anything that would keep him from kissing him.

But Connor is quiet and he lets Eli lean against him, a hand touching his face, moving around to the back of his head, pulling him forward into a kiss.

It’s surprising--

Connor is kissing him back, hand on his waist, holding him there. He doesn’t want to move, even when he breaks the kiss, he rests his forehead against Connor’s and hesitates. He can feel Connor’s breath on his skin and the hand on his waist moves to his back in a comforting movement, like he’s trying to keep Eli here, too.

_ Shit. _

He’s fucked this up. He’s ruined this. There isn’t any going back and the way Connor is treating him makes him not want to go back at all.

“Nothing?” Connor asks finally.

“What?”

“You said--”

“I remember what I said,” he says quietly, his memory only recalled after a few moments too late. “I just--I’ve never heard you laugh before.”

“And it made you want to kiss me?”

He wants to laugh, but he doesn’t. He shakes his head, “Just made me not be able to stop myself, I guess.”

“Maybe I should laugh more often, then."

There’s a sound that comes out of him that he doesn’t know what to call. Like he’s been attacked or hurt. Not the response he was expecting and not the response he really wanted. Too much of a promise that he could have more when he knows once Connor leaves he’ll realize how stupid it was that he alluded to something like that.

“Kam?”

“What?”

“Kiss me again.”

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t know why. There’s just this thought that the two of them can pretend one kiss didn’t happen but they can’t pretend two didn’t. Two is taking it past plausible deniability . One is pushing the limits of stupidity already.

“Kam--” the hand on his waist moves to the front of his shirt, pulling on it, tugging his body forward.

“I think you should go,” he whispers. “It’s late.”

“I want to stay.”

Elijah pulls away and Connor holds onto him for a moment, letting go slowly as he pulls back. “It’s late.”

“I don’t care--”

“Connor,” he whispers like a warning.

He nods, slowly, his face falling as he stands up, “Okay. I’ll go.”

  


Connor comes back--

_ He always comes back. _

And when he does, he's quiet as he steps inside of the house and pushes Elijah against the wall and kisses him. He doesn't know why he doesn't stop him this time. He should. But in the week that Connor has been gone he has grown to miss him, and Eli can't say that about anyone else in the world.

"Sorry," Connor says quietly, pulling back and resting his forehead against Eli's. "I wanted to see you sooner but work--"

"And I told you to leave," Eli whispers. "You didn't listen."

"Should I have?"

He smiles a little and shakes his head, "No, but…"

"But?"

"This is a mistake, Connor. We won't work."

"We can try. I want to try. I think… you do too, right?"

He nods, thinking about the way Connor laughed, the way his lips curve into a smile, the way he is holding Eli right now. He didn't slam him against a wall and kiss him and pull at his clothes like Eli was only going to be a sexual experiment. He's gentle and tender with his touches. Close but not suffocating. 

"Kam?"

"You should call me by my first name if you're going to be kissing me like that."

"Okay. _ Elijah," _he says, drawing it out unnecessarily. "Can we?"

"Can we?" he asks. He's stupid with the proximity between them. Nobody has touched him like this in a long time. He can't even remember the name of the person he kissed last.

"Try."

He nods barely and the action makes his lips brush against Connor's in such a ghostly way that it makes his thoughts go fuzzy. Connor smiles and he can feel the movement of his lips just before he's kissing him again.

His worries stay there, just on the surface, of how he isn't a person that would fit well with Connor. He won't go out on public dates and he'll resist marriage like it's a matter of life and death. Connor will never be a dad when they're together. They will be the bare minimum of a relationship that he thinks Connor will desire.

It's all such serious things to be thinking about during their third kiss, but he always jumps ahead too far. That's why it always cuts off so quickly. Because he knows he isn't the person that can provide futures that people want.

He won't cut this off too quickly, though. This time he knows he'll hold on. For that smile and that laugh. For the kindness. For the way Connor treats him. God, he's in trouble. He already knows he's going to fall in love hard and fast and it will be an inescapable place, if he isn't already there.

But it'll be worth it, just to hear Connor smile or laugh like that again.


End file.
